Dream Theatre

Double Blow out - Two hard drives bite the dust.

You know today didn't start out the best. Last night I attended the Marti Gras party in Roppongi which was excellent by the way. Naturally this morning the head and throat were feeling somewhat delicate. I had a Japanese class at 9.50 and was determined not to miss it. I forced myself to get up and get ready at 8am. Why torture myself like that, well even though the class is two hours later, I like to do a bit of pre-study beforehand in a coffee shop, usually complemented by the huge library that exists on my Ipod - or not as the case turned out.

I picked up my Ipod from its dock where it had spent the night recharging only to discover that it was empty. Yes you heard me right, the lights were all on but noone was home. What the hell was wrong with the bloody thing? Well, I loaded up Itunes but nothing would transfer across. Strange, but no time to investigate further, so I had to endure the Tokyo Monday morning subway hell to the soundtrack of coughing and sniffing and grunting and gasp breathing - utterly gross. I hate listening to the world on the train, its too in your face, I need isolation, I needed to be in my apple cube zone listening to an array of tastefully chosen tracks, anyone who knows me, knows how great my Itunes library is. I forwent my usual post study two hours in Starbucks to come home and sort things out. I turned on my Lacie HD where the Itunes library sits safely - or not. That's right, zip, nothing, just the nasty sound of a grinding hard drive, the equivilant of my old Ford Fiesta dying in the rain on a busy roundabout in England. I'd had the motoring equivilant of a double blow out. I couldn't believe it.  My worst fears were confirmed after running Mac OSX's first aid for disks. They were both DOA. I am royally screwed. My backup had let me down. Is there any hope for the future of data protection?

Well once burnt twice shy as they say (I think) so did some research and discovered a hitherto unused function on the Mac. Its called RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks). This a useful facility for backing up data painlesssly. when you store something on external drive A the writing of the data is mirrored on drive B, thereby automatically creating a safe image in case one of the buggers decides to be the pc world version of an 1970s Italian Car, that is have all the reliability of a 1980s Formula One Ferrari. (hmm that could be a analogy too far, but you get the idea. For more infomation check this link and think about backing up strategies. Well tomorrow its off to the Apple store for another show down with their Genius Bar, those guys must hate the sight of me now. Can't say I'm too fond of seeing them either.

New Mac product rumors

In a couple of days Mac World San Francisco 2006 begins. This is traditionally the time when Apple announce alot of their new consumer orientated products. The internet has been buzzing with rumors about what they will unveil at the show. If you check out the link www.macrumors.com you'll find plenty to chew on. Here's my take on some of those rumours.

New IBook

As I've said before on this blog I really want to see a new high powered laptop that doesn't break my arm when I carry it around. Rumours suggest that Mac are planning to release a new 13.3 inch wide screen Ibook, this will be the first major revision of the Ibook line in quite sometime, here's hoping it meets some of the criticisms that have been loaded against it, like more power, less weight, larger disk capacity, you know the usual.

It should also be the first Mac with the new Yonah Duel core processor. This baby is expected to increase the performance of operations significantly so, and also run alot cooler lengthening battery life, which is pretty pathetic on the macs in my opinion. Even when I bought my Powerbook two years ago I could only get 2 and half hours out of it.

New MacMini

This little box was released last year in an attempt by Apple to create a cheap Mac to persuade people to switch over from Windows based PCs. It was a cool concept, however I found the machine to be somewhat underpowered compared to my laptop and wasn't tempted. If the rumours are true. The next gen Mini will be akin to a Digital Video Recording hub designed to fit snuggly with your TV as the nexus point of a Home Entertainment system. I just hope they're generation with the spec. Anything less than 128 mb graphics card and 200 gigabyte hard drive will just be a wasted opportunity in my view.

Ipods

They've only recently updated their range in the last few months so its unlikely we'll see any major revisions to the line. However there has been some buzz that the Gigabyte Shuffle will be dropped as its too close in spec now to the Nano. Not exactly exciting stuff. Still looking forward to a proper video Ipod with a three inch screen, but that won't happen this quarter for sure.

Software

Ilife 6 looks like a definite, and no brainer really, expect improved updated versions of Iphoto and IDVD. Also something new called IWeb, this looks like an interesting app, as it you'll be able to build fully functional websites with a user friendly drag and drop system.

My personal wish is for an Intergrated Home Entertainment system which is built around a 32 inch LCD monitor. Seems to me the IMac range is sort of behind what other PC companies are doing right now. A look around Bic Camera in Hibiya makes it apparent that any update to a TV or home computer should be built around a computer that can record TV, download TV, music and movies and display them on a hi-def screen. If Apple are serious about expanding their consumer markets, such a system is a must this year.

Miss Digital World, no really.

Remember that scene in the only decent Matrix movie? You know the one where Morpheus is doing his Obi-wan routine and Neo gets distracted by a hot blond chick in a red dress? Yeah? Like that scene did you? Remember the follow up scene when Mouse, the cyber geek, askes Neo if he'd like some personal time with her? Yeah? Well then this article and link might interest you, especially if you're intrigued by the possibilities of cybersexuality.

Since political correctness ruined drama and comedy in the nineties, beauty pageants have been some what out of vogue, as bascially they treat women as clothes horses who are no better than a coat hanger, if you believe whoever was running the PC agenda at the time (my guess btw some puritanical neo nazi, but that's just me.) Myself, well, I've no problem with it so long as those who participate of their own volition don't.

However this article isn't a treatise in to feminism; this is about the Miss Digital World contest held recently in China. Yes, you heard me right, people are actually judging how beautiful various digital visions of women are. Surreal, disturbing, cyberpunkish? All three? Quite possibly. Living in Japan I've met more than my fair share of Otaku (the japanese word for loser stroke geek), having worked for a well known conversation school here in the late nineties, that place btw seemed to attract these kind of guys like flies to a fresh pile of dung.

I remember doing a lesson on an extremely dull Sunday afternoon with this guy who sort of reminded me of Frankenstein. For some stupid reason I decided to do a lesson about Dating. The guy sort of looked at me with - a why are we doing this? Do I really look like the kind of guy who dates? face. Well, I managed to get out of him what was his idea of a perfect woman, you know I was trying to illicit adjectives for personalities as you do when you're a bored conversation school instructor barely making minimum, instead what I got was the measurements and attributes of a digital Pam Anderson. The other student in the class was a guy, thank god, and I ended just going - well good luck with that. Not too pigionhole him or his profession, but he was a game designer, so he obviously didn't go out much. I'm sure he was tuned into his broadband connection to watch and see the results of the MDW 2005.

For me though, apart from the artistic merits in recreating beauty for the sake of art, I just don't see the attraction, I mean I'm sure some of those involved just do this for art and technology, but we all know that for a lot of people this will be more than that, they want these creations to walk around their virtual living room doing all sorts of stuff, which cannot be healthy for those already struggling with the question - what is real? Where's Neo and Morpheus when you need them huh? I guess they're all waiting, hoping for the day when they really can plug themselves into the net and experience the blonde in the red dress.

For more details of the event go to this article at The Guardian

Apple Care . . . less

There's been a gap in entries for the last week or so on my weblog due to some technical difficulties with my so called pro heavy duty Powerbook. What happened I hear you ask, well let me tell you. Maybe I'm just idealistic but the idea of having a notebook computer is that its portable, especially if you buy a 12 inch model. My original purpose in buying an Apple laptop was so that I could sit in Starbucks in Ginza or Roppongi, not London for obvious reasons, and write to my heart's content about all that was wonderful in the world and look extremely hip doing so with my sleek looking silver Porsche of the PC world. Like all dreams you wake up after a while and smell the acrid coffee. After a year of light use, I found that my power adapter port was a little unreliable and was not always powering up as it should do, which I found rather strange. On closer examination I noticed some warping around the edges near the socket. How it happened I couldn't say, I'm careful not to drop my computer and carry it in the recommended protected casing that my Mac Dealer recommended, so I can only assume a design flaw has caused this.

Talking to other friends with the same model I have heard similiar complaints. Anyway I found with a little bit of gentle twiggling the power would begin to flow and my Powerbook worked as usual. Until a fortnight ago that is when it decided to stop, no reason it just refused to charge, knowing that the Powerbook is a little more fragile than the brochures would care to admit, my Porsche has been sitting in the garage acting as nothing more than as a desktop replacement (wish I'd bought an IMac now). There was no choice I had to go down to the Apple Store to sort it out. The Genius bar rep immediately knew about the problem and tried to see if she could fix it, she couldn't and told me that the bottom casing would have to be replaced. I asked how much, she said it would be 34 000 yen, 16 000 yen for the new case and 17 000 approximately for the procedure. That's ladies and gentleman nearly 400 dollars, you can almost buy a new computer for that! I told her that I had Apple Care but was told that as it was physical damage  it was not covered. Not covered? Do you know how much Apple Care for a laptop costs? No? Well let me tell you, its 44 000 yen, that's close to 500 dollars. Now tell me why physical damage isn't covered with an insurance plan that costs nearly a quarter of the computer's retail price? Its no wonder why Apple have only 5% of the PC market, with care and prices like that being their customer is a bit like being King Kong's bitch on a container ship back to NYC, in other words painful and extremely sore!

On principal I argued and expressed my utter disgust, at which point I was recommended to try a third party adapter which might have a smaller socket and fit better than the Apple one. This involved me heading over to Bic Camera and trying one out. Fortunately it worked, not great, but it was light years ahead of the Apple adapter, and alot cheaper than replacing the lower chassis. All of this though has left a bitter taste in my mouth, the apple is really quite sour over here, and quite frankly I really am seriously considering returning to Dell for my next purchase, unless of course my complaints to Apple which start in the form of e-mails today aren't satisfactorily resolved.

Rant over and out.

Playstation 3 Region free?

I had one of those weekends which you might say were a bit of a guilty pleasure. That is, going to Akihabara and spending five hours helping a friend of mine look for a PlayStation 2 which would play English language games. It doesn't sound too much to ask for really, does it? However it took us  about 3 hours going around several games shops to find one. When we found one, we were dismayed to find out that the price tag was twenty per cent more. How the hell Sony execs sleep at night is beyond me. After much procrastination my friend bought the overpriced gadget, irritated at the fact that in less than four months the fabled PS3 will be arriving no doubt for a similiar price. You're probably wondering why bother buying a PS2 now, why not wait? However it was business reasons rather than pleasure, and he had no choice in the matter.

It got us talking though about the whole region coding thing and what a bloody rip-off it really is for consumers. For the unintiated, the reason why we had to spend extra spondolies (cash) was that Sony saw fit to restrict the games you can play on machines from different countries. For example if I have an American game it will not work on a console sold in Japan dispite the fact that both the TV signal and electrical systems are the same.

The reasons why they have this anti consumer strategy is based on a couple of utterly flawed notions. Firstly its supposed to prevent piracy. Secondly it prevents consumers  from buying games more cheaply from another market. Quite frankly its all a load of crap in my opinion. In regard to the first point it does nothing of the sort, actually I think it encourages it, as the only way to circumnavigate the region problem is to chip your console, which was disengage the region coding and also allow you to play pirated soft. Concerning the second argument, they are actually engaging in an anti-competitive practice that prevents consumers from finding the best deal.

Interestingly though this is all about to change with the release of the PS3. Some reps from Sony are saying that for games the new console will have no region coding. Their argument being that as TV formats are merging together under the new HD TV system there will be fewer regional incompatability problems.

It has of course nothing to do with the fact that in Australia SCE lost a legal battle that brought its policy of coding discs specifically for market regions under scrutiny from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The details of the case involved Sony sueing a retailer for selling mod chips which they said promoted piracy. However the ACCC intervened and ruled that Sony through its region coding had created an artifical trade barrier that prevented consumers from buying DVDs and software from cheaper markets.

Finally some common sense and I congratulate the ACCC's argument and stand for the consumer on this issue. For too long mega corp media companies have been treating consumers as either dumb or potential criminals, if I was to do that with my clients, I would be out of business. Why should mega corps be exempt from treating customers fairly like the rest of us? Lets hope the announcements so far hold and that the PS3 will be globally compatible. Apart from anything else when people have to move countries it defies belief that they then have to buy all new equipment thanks to ill thought out marketing and pricing strategies.

Powerbooks do Atkins diet?

For all you Mac heads out there I came across an interesting rumour on www.macrumors.com They're suggesting that Apple will be releasing a wide-screen Ibook and new slimline Power books around April. This is a significant development for Apple as their current range is in my opinion hopelessly out of date in design and spec, even the new Power books that recently came out are lagging behind in power compared to the recent crop of Windows laptops, looking quite frankly decidely obese, what are they doing at Apple feeding the bloody things Big Macs everyday?

According to the website they will all have a built in camera the same as the new Imacs, but more importantly they will be the first generation of Macs to actually use an Intel Chip. Part of the reason our  Aluminum laptops are so fat and heavy is because IBM couldn't be arsed investing the R&D dosh into creating smaller less power hungry processers, well why would you when Apple computers occupy the same niche market as handmade kimonos? Seriously the Ipod may be a brand leader, but Macs account for around only 5%of global PC sales.

I for one think that this is a good move for Apple, sure they might lose some of their prestige with a common Intel chip inside, I mean you wouldn't replace an Alfa Romeo 170's engine with some piece of mass produced junk from Ford now, would you? The thing is this laptops need more power and need to be lighter, carrying around this twelve inch brick of a powerbook is not an option I wish to continue. My only concern is that the new systems will still run software that was designed for my G4,  at the same speed, I've heard worrying rumors that some software may become obselete, I can't imagine Apple will allow that, its almost commerical suicide not to be backwardly compatiable these days, but you never know its Apple after all, they've just released video Ipods with less battery life than my 3G mobile.

An Apple Crumble?

At the moment it really looks like Apple can do no wrong. In the last week shares have gained value based on the news that people are actually buying digital video content from Itunes, the total is now over one million. I guess some people really do have too much money. Seriously, who on earth would pay money for a two minute video which previously could be seen for free on the recording artist's website?

Anyway for Apple it wasn't always this good, this article below details some of the spectacular business blunders Apple has been involved in since it opened for business. It's a cautionary tale, and if the writer Kieren McCarthy is to be believed, Jobs should take good hard look in the mirror and ask some seriously searching questions, namely, am I really an egomaniac who doesn't listen to anyone else but me?

A more cynical person might say that McCarthy recently bought one of Apple's new wonder products and felt quite rightly ripped off when he discovered all the scratches on his nano, and the anemic battery life of the Ipod Video.

Follow the link to the article

Trouble with Ipod Libraries

    Ever had the problem of not being able to move your Ipod library between different computers? Yeah? Its happened to me several times, first when I made the big switch from a PC to a Mac, the second time was when my 18 month old powerbook hard drive did an 1970s Lancia on me and blew up. After the hard drive was replaced and a new operating system installed Itunes kindly refused to copy files from my Ipod into my new hard drive. This meant having to go through the rather labourious chore of ripping all my cds again. Well thanks to a nifty link from a friend of mine, there is a less painful solution to this problem. Follow the link below to the Apple site. Why this function isn't built into the Ipod quite frankly is beyond me.

Link

New Ipod, a video nasty?

Apple announced yesterday the new Ipod with video capabilities. I was seriously considering an update, as the idea of being able to plug it into any TV would have made it a brilliant teaching aid, saving me lugging around the extremely unportable Powerbook I currently own. (Seriously Apple why not an ultra thin laptop update?)

However I will not be doing this, and here’s why.

What should have been the next gen killer app announcement, has just turned into another half-arsed update, with Apple, in my opinion, taking a very conservative approach to the whole video thing. Steve Jobs had said earlier this year that he was very lukewarm to the whole idea of video on the Ipod, admittedly these kind of statements I’m sure are made to throw off the competition, but the the fifth generation Ipod has his reluctance to take a risk with video written all over it.

First off the screen; 2.5 inches? That’s the same as most digicams, way too small to view anything for a more than a few minutes. Why not just go the whole hog and give us a new design? The whole face of the Ipod could have been a touch sensitive screen with a new virtual click wheel. All they’ve done is widen the screen a smidgen, yawn!. Then of course is the kind of media that it can play, hardly surprising really, but only MPeg4 files downloaded from I Tunes, unusually for Apple, you’re restricted on the ownership of the file, no burning to DVD, leaving your favourite video files to the mercy of hard drive failures. Now I’m sure that this is down to obese, anti-consumer friendly studios who want you to buy content at least twice and have still to learn an important lesson about how to treat their customers intelligently, but surely Apple could have offered more flexibility with formats? Why not allow people to play AVI files, for one? I’m sure future updates and hacks will allow this to happen, but it is showing that the Ipod is slowly drifting away from its consumer friendly origins which allowed customers to store their music in several formats, namely Apple’s ACC format and everyone’s fav, MP3. Maybe they'll get it right next time.